Despite covering 70% of the earths' surface, little is known about the subsea environment. Its nearly-impermeable communication medium and great pressures make accessing subsea information a daunting challenge.
Subsea acoustic communication systems could soon be used to provide widespread information about the subsea environment. Thousands of small acoustic nodes shoveled out of a plane could carpet the ocean floors making the subsea environment abundant with accessible information.
The greatest challenge for vast subsea networks is the limited battery power of each acoustic node. Remotely powering these nodes is possible but power transfer is limited. The core problem is the high power required by these nodes during data transmission. For example, a typical node only consumes 80 to 100 mW in the listening state, but consumes 10 to 50 W during transmission.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a system, apparatus and method that takes into account at least some of the issues discussed above, as well as possibly other issues.